AHG: Most Exotic Agricultures

Challenge: come up with plausible, widespread/dominant agricultural systems that are the most divergent from OTL's widespread/dominant systems of annual cereal crops, annual root crops (potatoes and manioc) and grazing domesticates (cattle/sheep), browsers (goats), and omnivores that can eat scraps and garbage (pigs, chickens).

You can meet the challenge by coming up with a plausible reason that an OTL area that was mainly cereal-growing, e.g., relies mainly on a tuber in TTL.

In 1493 Mann speculates that much of the Amazon was deliberately planted perennial trees that were about as far from being monocultures as possible, many different useful species per acre. Could that have become more widespread, or could something similar have occurred elsewhere?

I've also read here that European cattails had possibilities as a swamp crop, which would certainly be a change from OTL. Northwestern European irrigator societies would be very different.

Some other possibilities: mariculture, either of animals or plants. Insect raising. Animals as harvesters or food retrievers. Crop succession, where you plant several varieties at once with the slower-growing kind meant to eventually choke out the faster growing. Fungus, maybe as the main way of dealing with scraps or indigestible plant matter? Parasites or fungus as a way of controlling animal or insect behavior. Flying birds. Bats?
 
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It's hard to see how an alternative can remain dominant, given how versatile and productive cereals are, but I'll give it a shot.

The European Sylviculture Complex

The European landscape of the neolithic and bronze age is dominated by forest. Earlier generations of archeologists considered this evidence of the untamed and essentially untouched nature of this world, but in truth, the woods of ancient Europe were a carefully managed and highly productive system of cultivation. Its primary crops were tree nuts, especially beech, hazel and chestnut.

The forests for miles around the scattered villages consisted almost entirely of beeches, interspersed with oak, hazel, and berry bushes. The villagers only cleared small garden plots around their wooden huts and paddocks that housed their large herds of goats and semi-feral dogs. Within about half a day's walk from the village, the forest was managed intensely. Where villages were farther away from each other than this distance or the soil and geography did not allow for beechnut cultivation, it was left to its own devices. Non-forested areas were often subject to intense use as pasture for cattle or pigs, the latter a very unusual domesticate.

The sylvicultural system depended on careful management of the forest enviropnment in concert with animal husbandry. Inhabitants of the villages - the population numbers are unknown, but estimated in the high hundreds - would move through the surrounding woodland, often driving small herds of goats whose browsing cleared underbrush and saplings of unwanted tree species. In season, the entire village population would gather beechnuts, acorns, hazelnuts and chestnuts, collect leaves or fruit. Nuts were kept in baskets, probably suspended from the rafters of huts or stored in upstairs areas, while fruit and leaves were dried. Beechnuts and chestnuts provided the majority of calories, a diet augmented with dairy products and meat from the herds of goats, vegetables from garden plots, and fish caught in nearby watercourses. The painstakingly collected leaves supported the goats through the winter.

Dogs, another domestic species typically found in large numbers, were not commonly eaten (slaughter marks on bones suggest consumption in advanced age, an unattractive meat, except in a few cases, where puppies may have been consumed ritually). The puropse of the large packs of dogs that roamed the villages freely is thought to have deterring wild boars, abundant in ancient europe and serious competition for tree nuts as a source of food. While game animals generally are rare in the find material, the small percentage of their bones is dominated almost entirely by boar, with very little evidence of deer being eaten. Apparently, the ancient Europeans systematically hunted boar whenever they came into their roaming ranges.

Horticulture as well as organised gathering provided augmentations to the diet in the form of berries, mushrooms, legumes and tubers. Beans (faba spp.), cabbages and root vegetables were cultivated while berry bushes and fruit trees were usually merely encouraged to grow in the wild (goats were scrupulously kept away from berry patches in the early months of the year, and browsed these bushes in the autumn months).

Forest management was advanced, with hazel trees subject to coppicing and regular clearance of mature forest areas by burning. Building woods were almost invariable provided by non-nut-bearing trees, often from a considerable distance away, rather than conveniently located, but economically valuable crop trees. Underbrush was cleared by browsing herds of goats and occasional fires as well the regular harvesting of saplings and brushwood for use in fencing and as firewood. The resulting 'open' forest encouraged far-ranging gathering expeditions, and the individual geographic range of the ancient European population appears to have been considerable.
 
Interesting. I liked the European Silva culture.
How about using different plants, maybe one which were groen and dropped?
 
It's hard to see how an alternative can remain dominant, given how versatile and productive cereals are, but I'll give it a shot.

Not to mention crops are suppose to feed as many people as possible, which is why we have the crops we have... even if grain crops are extremely vulnerable.
 
Keep prohibition from passing, and a lot of the United States wine and beer culture will survive. New York and Virginia were well known for their wines up until then - the USA may be even more well known for our alcohols.
 
Aquaculture based on freshwater eels is pretty interesting, I don't think they mind living in close quarters and they can be fed on anything. Silkworms are pretty exotic too.

I wonder if humans could ever find use from Coral based aquaculture.
 
There are a number of edible waterplants (watercress, water chestnuts, bulrushes, lotus bulbs etc) that you could combine with an aquaculture (eel, crayfish and fish) interlinking pond system to support the local population.
 

mowque

Banned
There are a number of edible waterplants (watercress, water chestnuts, bulrushes, lotus bulbs etc) that you could combine with an aquaculture (eel, crayfish and fish) interlinking pond system to support the local population.

Cool but isn't it a bit small scale/ dependent on large local water supplies?
 
The Australian Aborigines could and did use a form of aquaculture and practiced fire-stick farming. It really wouldn't be too much of a stretch for them to continue with aquaculture and practice silviculture of the wattle
trees. Which might lead to domestication of some of their birds and perhaps horticulture of some plants. As far as the Americas go; I'm thinking of their rodents. The capybara,mara,agouti,paca,hutia and chinchilla all are potentially capable of domestication,plus the rheas and musk-ox might make a difference.
 
How about a civilization that only uses agriculture for non-food purposes?

It's thought that the earliest civilization in Peru, the Norte-Chico, had no staple cereal grain, and that their agricultural practices primarily revolved around growing cotton. They did grow some tropical fruits, so they don't meet the criteria entirely. Seafood was very important to their subsistence, and one of the most important uses of cotton was to make fishing nets.

The native tribes of the Pacific Northwest coast are regarded as some of the only known cultures in human history to establish a settled lifestyle without the development or adoption of agriculture, with people living in permanent or semi-permanent villages based on fishing. The lack of agriculture isn't entirely true, however, as it's been discovered that they participated in growing tobacco.
 

Zirantun

Banned
Are Western Capercaillies plausibly domesticable in you guys' opinion? Perhaps under the silviculture scenario?
 
How about a civilization that only uses agriculture for non-food purposes?

It's thought that the earliest civilization in Peru, the Norte-Chico, had no staple cereal grain, and that their agricultural practices primarily revolved around growing cotton. They did grow some tropical fruits, so they don't meet the criteria entirely. Seafood was very important to their subsistence, and one of the most important uses of cotton was to make fishing nets.

The native tribes of the Pacific Northwest coast are regarded as some of the only known cultures in human history to establish a settled lifestyle without the development or adoption of agriculture, with people living in permanent or semi-permanent villages based on fishing. The lack of agriculture isn't entirely true, however, as it's been discovered that they participated in growing tobacco.

Recent finds are saying that early Jomon cultures in Japan had a similar lifestyle, which makes sense given the environmental similarities between thew two regions. They subsisted mainly off of shellfish and nuts, if I recall correctly.
 
I looked it up and it seems like there are apparently a (very) few people raising capercaillies here in sweden, mostly as a form of hobby. Not sure if this means much.
 

Zirantun

Banned
Interesting, I'll have to look into that. I was reading in detail about their behavior and breeding habits, and seeing as they're kind of territorial and not very social, it might not be as plausible for an ancient culture as I had previously thought.


A very interesting alternative however, would be the Great Bustard, especially those rather sedentary populations in the Western Mediterranean.


Or perhaps, the Red-Legged or Barbary Partridges? My friends also used to keep Common Pheasants, and that's pretty widespread these days. They fair pretty well as domesticates.
 
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